Like Day and Night
by nathan-p
Summary: Jeb/ter Borcht twoshot. After everything goes wrong, and before things got their start. Warnings for TEH GHEY, off-screen suicide, and kissing while drunk. Oh, and Linkin Park lyrics.
1. Chapter 1

_"Sometimes solutions aren't so simple;_

_Sometimes goodbye's the only way."_

* * *

He closes his eyes and turns away, facing the wall instead of the window. He doesn't want to look at his watch anymore, the glowing dial reminding him that it's half-past one in the morning, that he should have been asleep long ago.

Everything is gone.

_Everything_.

And it's because of Batchelder. Batchelder and his obsession with his own little project.

Because of Batchelder, he's on the run now. He was hiding out while the others died. While they were executed by men who lined them up against concrete walls. While they were gassed to death. While they were hung. While they shot themselves to escape persecution.

He feels like Eichmann, Mengele; safe in hiding while his comrades are executed one by one.

And it's all because of Batchelder -- Batchelder and his petty obsessions -- because of him that everything is gone.

It took him almost a year to find out that Batchelder is dead. He was disappointed, a little, because it meant he couldn't personally throttle the man for causing the whole mess.

But mostly he was frightened. Because Batchelder had been in hiding too. Except Batchelder had been hiding out with a comrade of his, a man whose name was never mentioned in the articles.

The unnamed comrade shot himself before he could be executed.

He can't get that off his mind.

He sighs. It's funny. It's once he _stopped_ working, once he _stopped_ "committing atrocities", that he can't get to sleep at night.

It's all failed.

Because of Batchelder.

It's all Batchelder's fault.

And yet... ter Borcht can't bring himself to condemn Batchelder for it.

Even though it _is_ his fault.

* * *

300 words _exactly_. Even though that includes the song lyrics, which I think is cheating.

Though this is a fine stand-alone, it's part one of a Jeb/ter Borcht twoshot that I figured I'd write just for the hell of it. (Part two is still in the works, and contains the title shout-out that everyone will expect from this.)

Song lyrics, incidentally, are from "Shadow of the Day" by Linkin Park. I'm not in the band. I don't own the lyrics.


	2. Chapter 2

"_Sometimes beginnings aren't so simple;_

_Sometimes goodbye's the only way."_

_

* * *

_It started with the mistletoe.

He's pretty much sure of it.

He'd wound up under the mistletoe for some reason, and then ter Borcht bumped into him, the visiting German snickering in a way that was just plain unholy.

And of course Val had insisted that they _had_ to kiss, that was just what you _did _under the mistletoe -- despite the fact that she and that devil-woman Anne Walker had stood under a clump of the foul stuff for a solid _ten minutes_ earlier in the party, without _any_ kissing.

He suspected it was revenge for forgetting her birthday, but what the hell, right -- so he kissed ter Borcht anyway.

On the lips. Just to spite Val.

Or at least that was the justification he gave himself for it.

And the tongue was _entirely_ ter Borcht's idea (if that were something you could call an idea).

At any rate, they _did_ kiss. (That was for sure -- mainly because there were _pictures_. Who had had a camera and why, he wasn't too concerned about.)

And Jeb wound up dragging ter Borcht back to his room in the barracks. Possibly there was a justification for this, but if so, it was one neither of them remembered.

After that, he doesn't remember terribly much.

Except for a terrible, terrible hangover, and the fact that for whatever reason, he wasn't very surprised to wake up next to ter Borcht the morning after.

Or surprised when ter Borcht told him that they made a great pair, and should really work together more often.

Despite the _fact_ that they were pretty much as different as day and night.

Which isn't very different, come to think of it.

But Jeb didn't mention that.

* * *

Well, here it is.

Again, exactly 300 words, and yes, this seriously took five months to write. I kept making false starts and then never finishing them.

Song lyrics are _still_ Linkin Park's.

Apologies for mildly spastic style, taking five months to update.


End file.
